6/25/2012 This Way Out

"NewsWrap": More than 2,000 government officials and religious leaders gather in Ethiopia's capital of Addis Ababa for a national anti-gay conference, while 23-year-old South African gay and transgender rights activist Thapelo Makutle is brutally murdered in his rented room in the Kuruman township, and the newly installed chair of Costa Rica's Commission on Human Rights, Protestant minister and legislator Justo Orozco, calls homosexuality a sin and claims that gay people can be "cured"; the Church of England and Roman Catholic bishops of England and Wales each submit opposition papers opposing the British government's proposed legislation to open civil marriage to lesbian and gay couples, but U.S. Conservative Judaism affirms that marriages of gay and lesbian couples have "the same sense of holiness and joy as that expressed in heterosexual marriages," and approves rituals for same-gender wedding ceremonies; Washington's Secretary of State confirms that opponents of recently-approved marriage equality legislation have submitted enough petition signatures to put the issue to a public vote in November, President Obama urges a no vote on a similar repeal effort in Maryland, and Minnesota-based food giant General Mills announces its opposition to a proposed constitutional amendment in its home state to define civil marriage as exclusively heterosexual; riot police protect several hundred Pride marchers in the Croatian city of Split, while an estimated three million revelers party with Pride in Sao Paolo, and Prideful pink and lavender lighting illuminates San Francisco and Los Angeles city halls (written by GREG GORDON with thanks to REX WOCKNER, produced by STEVE PRIDE, and reported this week by ROBERT LEBLANC and NATALIE PEOPLES)

What a difference a year can make! U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE LEON PANETTA stepped into the pages of his country's LGBT history books on June 15th with a post-"Don't Ask Don't Tell" salute many years, and much dedicated activism, in the making (intro'd by an excerpt from the "Mischievous March" in PETER ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY's Sixth Symphony)

Singer-songwriter RYAN STATES talks about how listening to "This Way Out" helped inspire him to be an "out" performer [with an excerpt from his "Better (When You're Older)", and special thanks to JD DOYLE]

If you think everything important in the U.S. LGBT movement happens on the east and west coasts, you need to hear the interesting conversation "This Way Out" correspondent VASH BODDIE had recently with JERRY GERASH, a history-making Jewish/ artist/filmmaker/lawyer/gay liberation activist from Colorado about the "GAY REVOLT AT DENVER CITY COUNCIL, OCTOBER 23, 1973 AND HOW IT CHANGED OUR WORLD" [www.denvergayrevolt.com]